


The Stranger Catches Us All

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Death, F/M, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:20:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No longer being the Maid of Tarth has its natural consequences. Brienne tries to plan accordingly. Jaime would rather not talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stranger Catches Us All

**Author's Note:**

> Yep. It’s a J/B baby fic. Sort of. Depends on how dark you like your headcanon. I take it milky and fairly sweet, like my coffee. But Brienne is just too practical to let things get too happy-go-lucky, however happy the occasion. So. 
> 
> Vaguely post-canon. Brienne’s family history has been slightly tweaked. I own zip, zilch, nada.

“It happens, Jaime,” Brienne said as levelly as she could. It had been a long and largely one-sided conversation, the latest of many. 

“It will not happen,” came the mulish response. 

“Jaime.” 

She heard the thin whine of exasperation edge into her voice. Brienne stopped, closed her eyes, took a deep breath. She did not know how to get around his stubborn refusal to even speak, let alone consider, the plain facts. 

She could take churlish Jaime and his biting comments. She could take playful, teasing Jaime, and then some. She could even manage frightened Jaime. She had done so in the past. Unwanted, the night in the Riverlands when he lost his hand and became something other than a charge and a burden rose before her eyes, and was summarily pushed aside. No time for that now. Brienne’s time was running short. There was no way around that. 

She tried again. 

“Women die in the birthing bed,” she said in the same voice in which she would discuss armor or the best way across a frozen ravine. “My mother did. So did yours.” The tremor crept into her voice despite her best efforts, the gaping hole that never closes up inside a motherless child. 

Jaime sat staring into the fire, resolutely not looking at her, not even acknowledging her bulk beside him. Despite his best efforts at unresponsiveness, his breathing gained in speed and depth, like a bull just starting to consider pawing the ground. 

Encouraged, Brienne dared a touch, the lightest shiver of her fingers down his arm. Was met with a slight tensing of muscles, a swordsman’s instinctual response not undone by the years without his sword hand. Feeling bolder, she pressed the advantage: “It is possible…”

“It is not,” he cut across her, whip-quick. “You are not going to die. Not like that.” 

“But if I do…”

“You will not.”

He had made the same solemn pronouncement on many an earlier occasion. This time, Brienne noticed the desperation behind it crumbling at the edges like sand off a block of granite, something else emerging in its place. She had to capture that something before it turned to rage or, worse, the blind rejection which opens the door to hatred. 

“The bravest thing my father ever did was not to blame me for my mother’s passing. I had killed her, and I was a burden to him. He could have despised me. He did not.” She paused deliberately, knew Jaime was thinking of his own brother and father, and how his whole family was poisoned the day Joanna Lannister breathed her last. 

“If I die,” Brienne went on as though death were nothing more inconvenient than her moon’s blood when they were both in a particular mood, something they could work around. “If I die, you have to love the child regardless. You have to be _kind_ to him.” Jaime Lannister loved with strength and conviction, but kindness did not come to him easily. "Or her." Then, with a concealed shudder of distaste, remembering his family’s history with twins, Brienne added: “Or them.” 

He was listening so intently, not a muscle moved. “You think that because our mothers died, so will you.”

Brienne squeezed her eyes shut because he could not see her do it, breathed a sigh of relief that he was finally saying the words, hated herself for making him speak of it. “I do not. I _know_ that women die. I _think_ my body is better suited to marching and wielding a sword and riding than to childbearing.”

In her relief that she could finally say this and have him listen, she spoke too hastily. Jaime looked at her over his shoulder, slid her a sly smile that sent a shiver right up her legs. “Is that what has you worried, wench? That you are better suited to war and riding, but remained a maid longer than most natural _riders_? Easily solved: I will simply mount you more often until your birthing pains begin.” 

Not remotely for the first time, Brienne cursed her blushes, his ability to distract her with a word, a glance. She had never felt so much like the cow she had often been compared to as she had the last few moons, grown large and slow. Because the gods had a sense of humor not unlike her husband’s, the only times she regained even a smidgen of her former agility, the ease with which she could command her body to engage and respond, was on her hands and knees. Or lying on her side, Jaime’s chest pressed against her sweaty back, his groans and sighs in her ear, fingers stroking her swollen belly and slipping lower. Or astride him, her breasts for once overflowing his eager hand, their bodies molded together with such slick ease she could sometimes barely believe she was less than two moons away from giving birth. Or dying. Or both. 

Jaime was still teasing her, using his words to stroke her into arousal, trying to talk courage into them both. “I like the idea more and more. Twice a day, at least, and daily _sparring_ sessions with my hand, perhaps. I will open you up, so you are good and ready when the time comes.” 

“Promise me, Jaime.” He was jesting, but he was also finally listening. She could not let the opportunity pass, she did not have the time. 

“Words are wind, wench, haven’t you learned that by now?”

She did not want to use a woman’s wiles, but he had her backed into a corner. She sat up with difficulty from where she reclined comfortably, took hold of his arm, ran her fingers down his cheek till they caught in his beard. “Promise me.” 

He breathed deeply, once, twice, his whole body coiled, his lewd jests forgotten. “I promise.” 

A promise given grudgingly or under duress was no true promise. Brienne knew that she would have to make him say the words again. Not for lack of trust, but so that they would become so much a part of him that he would have no choice but to act in accordance with them if… 

If. 

She leaned her chin on his shoulder, spoke half into his beard and half into his ear. “Thank you.” 

“Stupid wench.”

“Lecherous lion.” 

“You are not going to die, you know. The Stranger would have to go through me first.”

There had been too many occasions already when she had felt certain the Stranger was there for one or both of them. She had not forced Jaime to speak of the possibility of her death in order to have him brood on it. Or on the children who had never really been his. Or on their mother. The dead whose shades he bore in his saddlebags, light yet unshakable. As Brienne carried the memories of her own dead. 

She shifted her chin on his shoulder, flicked his cheek with her tongue. “I have no doubt you would give him a good fight. But right now, I would rather go riding.” 

It was not often that Brienne got to outwit her husband or catch him off his guard. She relished the startled moment of silence while he took in the fact that his proper, pregnant wife had just made a proposal worthy of an overeager novice tavern girl. 

While he turned to her and pulled her closer, grinning, the twinkle in his eye suggesting he would tease her for that remark for days to come, she told herself this might become one of the memories that would help her through the pain and struggle of the birthing bed. Instead of her memories of war and terror, of pity and dragons and the dead, she would think of this: a room, a fire in the grate, two people, the door locked and barred against the night and the Stranger.


End file.
